Hubble Images.pdf

8/14/2019 Hubble Images.pdf

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Hubble Images

Also see our images on eso.org, iau.org, astronomy2009.org.A rose made of galaxies

1This image of a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273 was released to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the launch of

the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The distorted shape of the larger of the two galaxies shows signs of tidal interactions with the smaller of the two. It isthought that the smaller galaxy has actually passed through the larger one.Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)Extreme star cluster bursts into life in new Hubble image

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The star-forming region NGC 3603 - seen here in the latest Hubble Space Telescope image - contains one of the mostimpressive massive young star clusters in the Milky Way. Bathed in gas and dust the cluster formed in a huge rush of starformation thought to have occurred around a million years ago. The hot blue stars at the core are responsible for carving


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out a huge cavity in the gas seen to the right of the star cluster in NGC 3603's centre.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Stellar Nursery in the arms of NGC 1672

3The barred spiral galaxy NGC 1672, showing up clusters of hot young blue stars along its spiral arms, and clouds ofhydrogen gas glowing in red. Delicate curtains of dust partially obscure and redden the light of the stars behind them. NGC

1672's symmetric look is emphasised by the four principal arms, edged by eye-catching dust lanes that extend out fromthe centre.

Credit:

NASA, ESA

Colliding galaxies make love, not war

4This Hubble image of the Antennae galaxies is the sharpest yet of this merging pair of galaxies. As the two galaxiessmash together, billions of stars are born, mostly in groups and clusters of stars. The brightest and most compact of

these are called super star clusters.Credit:

Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration. Acknowledgement: B.Whitmore ( Space Telescope Science Institute) and James Long (ESA/Hubble).Magnetic monster NGC 1275


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This stunning image of NGC 1275 was taken using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera forSurveys in July and August 2006. It provides amazing detail and resolution of the fragile filamentary structures, which showup as a reddish lacy structure surrounding the central bright galaxy NGC 1275. These filaments are cool despite being

surrounded by gas that is around 55 million degrees Celsius hot. They are suspended in a magnetic field which maintainstheir structure and demonstrates how energy from the central black hole is transferred to the surrounding gas.

By observing the filamentary structure, astronomers were, for the first time, able to estimate the magnetic field's strength.Using this information they demonstrated how the extragalactic magnetic fields have maintained the structure of the

filaments against collapse caused by either gravitational forces or the violence of the surrounding cluster during their 100-million-year lifetime.

This is the first time astronomers have been able to differentiate the individual threads making up such filaments to thisdegree. Astonishingly, they distinguished threads a mere 200 light-years across. By contrast, the filaments seen here canbe a gaping 200 000 light-years long. The entire image is approximately 260 000 light-years across.

Also seen in the image are impressive lanes of dust from a separate spiral galaxy. It lies partly in front of the giant ellipticalcentral cluster galaxy and has been completed disrupted by the tidal gravitational forces within the galaxy cluster. Several

striking filaments of blue newborn stars are seen crossing the image.Credit:

NASA, ESA and Andy Fabian (University of Cambridge, UK)Hubble sees galaxies galore


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6Galaxies, galaxies everywhere - as far as the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000

galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view

represents a "deep" core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years.

The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colours. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100,may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies -the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals - thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion

years old.

In vibrant contrast to the rich harvest of classic spiral and elliptical galaxies, there is a zoo of oddball galaxies littering the

field. Some look like toothpicks; others like links on a bracelet. A few appear to be interacting. These oddball galaxieschronicle a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic. Order and structure were just beginning to emerge.

The Ultra Deep Field observations, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, represent a narrow, deep view of the

cosmos. Peering into the Ultra Deep Field is like looking through a 2.5 metre-long soda straw.

In ground-based photographs, the patch of sky in which the galaxies reside (just one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon) islargely empty. Located in the constellation Fornax, the region is so empty that only a handful of stars within the Milky

Way galaxy can be seen in the image.

In this image, blue and green correspond to colours that can be seen by the human eye, such as hot, young, blue stars

and the glow of Sun-like stars in the disks of galaxies. Red represents near-infrared light, which is invisible to the humaneye, such as the red glow of dust-enshrouded galaxies.

The image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposuretime was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004.Credit:

NASA, ESA, and S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF TeamHubble's sharpest view of the Orion Nebula


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7This dramatic image offers a peek inside a cavern of roiling dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. The image,

taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) aboard NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, represents the sharpest

view ever taken of this region, called the Orion Nebula. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Someof them have never been seen in visible light. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus,

mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon.

The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the

pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. The bright central region is the home of the four heftiest starsin the nebula. The stars are called the Trapezium because they are arranged in a trapezoid pattern. Ultraviolet lightunleashed by these stars is carving a cavity in the nebula and disrupting the growth of hundreds of smaller stars. Located

near the Trapezium stars are stars still young enough to have disks of material encircling them. These disks are calledprotoplanetary disks or "proplyds" and are too small to see clearly in this image. The disks are the building blocks of solar

systems.

The bright glow at upper left is from M43, a small region being shaped by a massive, young star's ultraviolet light.Astronomers call the region a miniature Orion Nebula because only one star is sculpting the landscape. The Orion Nebulahas four such stars. Next to M43 are dense, dark pillars of dust and gas that point toward the Trapezium. These pillars areresisting erosion from the Trapezium's intense ultraviolet light. The glowing region on the right reveals arcs and bubbles

formed when stellar winds - streams of charged particles ejected from the Trapezium stars - collide with material.

The faint red stars near the bottom are the myriad brown dwarfs that Hubble spied for the first time in the nebula in visible

light. Sometimes called "failed stars," brown dwarfs are cool objects that are too small to be ordinary stars because theycannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. The dark red column, below, left, shows an illuminatededge of the cavity wall.

The Orion Nebula is 1,500 light-years away, the nearest star-forming region to Earth. Astronomers used 520 Hubbleimages, taken in five colours, to make this picture. They also added ground-based photos to fill out the nebula. The ACS

mosaic covers approximately the apparent angular size of the full moon.

The Orion observations were taken between 2004 and 2005.

Credit:

NASA, ESA, M. Robberto ( Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury

Project TeamMost detailed image of the Crab Nebula


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8This new Hubble image - One among the largest ever produced with the Earth-orbiting observatory - shows gives the most

detailed view so far of the entire Crab Nebula ever made. The Crab is arguably the single most interesting object, as well

as one of the most studied, in all of astronomy. The image is the largest image ever taken with Hubble's WFPC2workhorse camera.

The Crab Nebula is one of the most intricately structured and highly dynamical objects ever observed. The new Hubbleimage of the Crab was assembled from 24 individual exposures taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope and is

the highest resolution image of the entire Crab Nebula ever madeCredit:

NASA, ESA and Allison Loll/Jeff Hester (Arizona State University). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)Hubble Mosaic of the Majestic Sombrero Galaxy

9NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe's most stately and photogenicgalaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy's hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by

the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on.We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its

resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat.

At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through smalltelescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive

objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from EarthCredit:


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NASA/ESA and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)

The magnificent starburst galaxy Messier 82

10This mosaic image of the magnificent starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82) is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained ofM82. It is a galaxy remarkable for its webs of shredded clouds and flame-like plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out from

its central regions where young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside in our Milky Way Galaxy.Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA). Acknowledgment: J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M.Mountain (STScI) and P. Puxley (NSF).The Eagle has risen: Stellar spire in the Eagle Nebula


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11Appearing like a winged fairy-tale creature poised on a pedestal, this object is actually a billowing tower of cold gas anddust rising from a stellar nursery called the Eagle Nebula. The soaring tower is 9.5 light-years or about 90 trillion

kilometres high, about twice the distance from our Sun to the next nearest star.

Stars in the Eagle Nebula are born in clouds of cold hydrogen gas that reside in chaotic neighbourhoods, where energy

from young stars sculpts fantasy-like landscapes in the gas. The tower may be a giant incubator for those newborn stars.A torrent of ultraviolet light from a band of massive, hot, young stars [off the top of the image] is eroding the pillar.

The starlight also is responsible for illuminating the tower's rough surface. Ghostly streamers of gas can be seen boiling offthis surface, creating the haze around the structure and highlighting its three-dimensional shape. The column issilhouetted against the background glow of more distant gas.

The edge of the dark hydrogen cloud at the top of the tower is resisting erosion, in a manner similar to that of brush amonga field of prairie grass that is being swept up by fire. The fire quickly burns the grass but slows down when it encounters

the dense brush. In this celestial case, thick clouds of hydrogen gas and dust have survived longer than their surroundings


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in the face of a blast of ultraviolet light from the hot, young stars.

Inside the gaseous tower, stars may be forming. Some of those stars may have been created by dense gas collapsingunder gravity. Other stars may be forming due to pressure from gas that has been heated by the neighbouring hot stars.

The first wave of stars may have started forming before the massive star cluster began venting its scorching light. The starbirth may have begun when denser regions of cold gas within the tower started collapsing under their own weight to make

stars.

The bumps and fingers of material in the centre of the tower are examples of these stellar birthing areas. These regionsmay look small but they are roughly the size of our solar system. The fledgling stars continued to grow as they fed off thesurrounding gas cloud. They abruptly stopped growing when light from the star cluster uncovered their gaseous cradles,separating them from their gas supply.

Ironically, the young cluster's intense starlight may be inducing star formation in some regions of the tower. Examples can

be seen in the large, glowing clumps and finger-shaped protrusions at the top of the structure. The stars may be heatingthe gas at the top of the tower and creating a shock front, as seen by the bright rim of material tracing the edge of thenebula at top, left. As the heated gas expands, it acts like a battering ram, pushing against the darker cold gas. The

intense pressure compresses the gas, making it easier for stars to form. This scenario may continue as the shock frontmoves slowly down the tower.

The dominant colours in the image were produced by gas energized by the star cluster's powerful ultraviolet light. The blue

colour at the top is from glowing oxygen. The red colon in the lower region is from glowing hydrogen. The Eagle Nebulaimage was taken in November 2004 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space

Telescope.Credit:

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)Pillars of Creation

12These columns that resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern columns are in fact cool interstellar

hydrogen gas and dust that act as incubators for new stars. Inside them and on their surface astronomers have foundknots or globules of denser gas. These are called EGGs (acronym for "Evaporating Gaseous Globules"). Inside at leastsome of the EGGs stars being formed.

Undersea coral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are actually columns of coolinterstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark


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molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern.

Credit:

Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA/ESA

Butterfly emerges from stellar demise in planetary nebula NGC 6302

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This celestial object looks like a delicate butterfly. But it is far from serene.

What resemble dainty butterfly wings are actually roiling cauldrons of gas heated to nearly 20 000 degrees Celsius. The

gas is tearing across space at more than 950 000 kilometres per hour fast enough to travel from Earth to the Moon in24 minutes!

A dying star that was once about five times the mass of the Sun is at the centre of this fury. It has ejected its envelope ofgases and is now unleashing a stream of ultraviolet radiation that is making the cast-off material glow. This object is an

example of a planetary nebula, so-named because many of them have a round appearance resembling that of a planetwhen viewed through a small telescope.

The Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3), a new camera aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, snapped this image ofthe planetary nebula, catalogued as NGC 6302, but more popularly called the Bug Nebula or the Butterfly Nebula. WFC3was installed by NASA astronauts in May 2009, during the Servicing Mission to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old

Hubble.

NGC 6302 lies within our Milky Way galaxy, roughly 3800 light-years away in the constellation of Scorpius. The glowing

gas is the star's outer layers, expelled over about 2200 years. The "butterfly" stretches for more than two light-years,which is about half the distance from the Sun to the nearest star, Proxima Centauri.

The central star itself cannot be seen, because it is hidden within a doughnut-shaped ring of dust, which appears as a darkband pinching the nebula in the centre. The thick dust belt constricts the star's outflow, creating the classic "bipolar" orhourglass shape displayed by some planetary nebulae.

The star's surface temperature is estimated to be over 220 000 degrees Celsius, making it one of the hottest known starsin our galaxy. Spectroscopic observations made with ground-based telescopes show that the gas is roughly 20 000

degrees Celsius, which is unusually hot compared to a typical planetary nebula.


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The WFC3 image reveals a complex history of ejections from the star. The star first evolved into a huge red giant, with a

diameter of about 1000 times that of our Sun. It then lost its extended outer layers. Some of this gas was cast off from itsequator at a relatively slow speed, perhaps as low as 32 000 kilometres per hour, creating the doughnut-shaped ring.Other gas was ejected perpendicular to the ring at higher speeds, producing the elongated "wings" of the butterfly-shaped

structure. Later, as the central star heated up, a much faster stellar wind, a stream of charged particles travelling at morethan 3.2 million kilometres per hour, ploughed through the existing wing-shaped structure, further modifying its shape.

The image also shows numerous finger-like projections pointing back to the star, which may mark denser blobs in theoutflow that have resisted the pressure from the stellar wind.

The nebula's reddish outer edges are largely due to light emitted by nitrogen, which marks the coolest gas visible in thepicture. WFC3 is equipped with a wide variety of filters that isolate light emitted by various chemical elements, allowingastronomers to infer properties of the nebular gas, such as its temperature, density and composition.

The white-coloured regions are areas where light is emitted by sulphur. These are regions where fast-moving gas overtakes

and collides with slow-moving gas that left the star at an earlier time, producing shock waves in the gas (the bright whiteedges on the sides facing the central star). The white blob with the crisp edge at upper right is an example of one of thoseshock waves.

NGC 6302 was imaged on 27 July 2009 with Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3 in ultraviolet and visible light. Filters thatisolate emissions from oxygen, helium, hydrogen, nitrogen and sulphur from the planetary nebula were used to create this

composite image.

These Hubble observations of the planetary nebula NGC 6302 are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release

ObservationsCredit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO TeamYoung stars sculpt gas with powerful outflows

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This Hubble Space Telescope view shows one of the most dynamic and intricately detailed star-forming regions in space,located 210,000 light-years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. At the centreof the region is a brilliant star cluster called NGC 346. A dramatic structure of arched, ragged filaments with a distinct

ridge surrounds the cluster.


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A torrent of radiation from the hot stars in the cluster NGC 346, at the centre of this Hubble image, eats into denser areas

around it, creating a fantasy sculpture of dust and gas. The dark, intricately beaded edge of the ridge, seen in silhouette,is particularly dramatic. It contains several small dust globules that point back towards the central cluster, like windsockscaught in a gale.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and A. Nota (ESA/STScI, STScI/AURA)A Poster-Size Image of the Beautiful Barred Spiral Galaxy NGC 1300

15One of the largest Hubble Space Telescope images ever made of a complete galaxy is being unveiled today at theAmerican Astronomical Society meeting in San Diego, Calif.

The Hubble telescope captured a display of starlight, glowing gas, and silhouetted dark clouds of interstellar dust in this 4-foot-by-8-foot image of the barred spiral galaxy NGC 1300. NGC 1300 is considered to be prototypical of barred spiralgalaxies. Barred spirals differ from normal spiral galaxies in that the arms of the galaxy do not spiral all the way into the

center, but are connected to the two ends of a straight bar of stars containing the nucleus at its center.Credit:

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)Hubble captures view of Mystic Mountain

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This craggy fantasy mountaintop enshrouded by wispy clouds looks like a bizarre landscape from Tolkiens The Lord of theRings. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image, which is even more dramatic than fiction, captures the chaoticactivity atop a pillar of gas and dust, three light-years tall, which is being eaten away by the brilliant light from nearby

bright stars. The pillar is also being assaulted from within, as infant stars buried inside it fire off jets of gas that can be


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seen streaming from towering peaks.

This turbulent cosmic pinnacle lies within a tempestuous stellar nursery called the Carina Nebula, located 7500 light-yearsaway in the southern constellation of Carina. The image celebrates the 20th anniversary of Hubble's launch and

deployment into an orbit around the Earth.

Scorching radiation and fast winds (streams of charged particles) from super-hot newborn stars in the nebula are shaping

and compressing the pillar, causing new stars to form within it. Streamers of hot ionised gas can be seen flowing off theridges of the structure, and wispy veils of gas and dust, illuminated by starlight, float around its towering peaks. The

denser parts of the pillar are resisting being eroded by radiation.

Nestled inside this dense mountain are fledgling stars. Long streamers of gas can be seen shooting in opposite directionsfrom the pedestal at the top of the image. Another pair of jets is visible at another peak near the centre of the image.

These jets, (known as HH 901 and HH 902, respectively, are signposts for new star birth and are launched by swirling gasand dust discs around the young stars, which allow material to slowly accrete onto the stellar surfaces.

Hubbles Wide Field Camera 3 observed the pillar on 1-2 February 2010. The colours in this composite image correspondto the glow of oxygen (blue), hydrogen and nitrogen (green), and sulphur (red).

Credit:

NASA, ESA, M. Livio and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team (STScI)

Galactic wreckage in Stephan's Quintet

17A clash among members of a famous galaxy quintet reveals an assortment of stars across a wide colour range, from

young, blue stars to aging, red stars.

This portrait of Stephan's Quintet, also known as the Hickson Compact Group 92, was taken by the new Wide FieldCamera 3 (WFC3) aboard the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Stephan's Quintet, as the name implies, is a group offive galaxies. The name, however, is a bit of a misnomer. Studies have shown that group member NGC 7320, at upper left,is actually a foreground galaxy that is about seven times closer to Earth than the rest of the group.

Three of the galaxies have distorted shapes, elongated spiral arms, and long, gaseous tidal tails containing myriad starclusters, proof of their close encounters. These interactions have sparked a frenzy of star birth in the central pair of

galaxies. This drama is being played out against a rich backdrop of faraway galaxies.


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The image, taken in visible and near-infrared light, showcases WFC3's broad wavelength range. The colours trace the ages

of the stellar populations, showing that star birth occurred at different epochs, stretching over hundreds of millions of years.The camera's infrared vision also peers through curtains of dust to see groupings of stars that cannot be seen in visiblelight.

NGC 7319, at top right, is a barred spiral with distinct spiral arms that follow nearly 180 degrees back to the bar. The bluespecks in the spiral arm at the top of NGC 7319 and the red dots just above and to the right of the core are clusters of

many thousands of stars. Most of the Quintet is too far away even for Hubble to resolve individual stars.

Continuing clockwise, the next galaxy appears to have two cores, but it is actually two galaxies, NGC 7318A and NGC7318B. Encircling the galaxies are young, bright blue star clusters and pinkish clouds of glowing hydrogen where infantstars are being born. These stars are less than 10 million years old and have not yet blown away their natal cloud. Faraway from the galaxies, at right, is a patch of intergalactic space where many star clusters are forming.

NGC 7317, at bottom left, is a normal-looking elliptical galaxy that is less affected by the interactions.

Sharply contrasting with these galaxies is the dwarf galaxy NGC 7320 at upper left. Bursts of star formation are occurringin the galaxy's disc, as seen by the blue and pink dots. In this galaxy, Hubble can resolve individual stars, evidence that

NGC 7320 is closer to Earth. NGC 7320 is 40 million light-years from Earth. The other members of the Quintet resideabout 300 million light-years away in the constellation Pegasus.

These more distant members are markedly redder than the foreground galaxy, suggesting that older stars reside in their

cores. The stars' light also may be further reddened by dust stirred up in the encounters.

Spied by Edouard M. Stephan in 1877, Stephan's Quintet is the first compact group ever discovered.

WFC3 observed the Quintet in July and August 2009. The composite image was made by using filters that isolate light

from the blue, green and infrared portions of the spectrum, as well as emission from ionised hydrogen.

These Hubble observations are part of the Hubble Servicing Mission 4 Early Release Observations. NASA astronauts

installed the WFC3 camera during a servicing mission in May to upgrade and repair the 19-year-old Hubble telescope.Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO TeamBarred Spiral Galaxy NGC 6217


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18This is the first image of a celestial object taken with the newly repaired Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). The camerawas restored to operation during the STS-125 Servicing Mission to upgrade the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope.

The barred spiral galaxy NGC 6217 was photographed on 13 June and 8 July 2009, as part of the initial testing andcalibration of Hubbles ACS. The galaxy lies 6 million light-years away in the north circumpolar constellation Ursa Major.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and the Hubble SM4 ERO TeamDramatically backlit dust lanes in NGC 7049

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The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured this image of NGC 7049 in the constellation of Indus, in the southern

sky. A family of globular clusters appears as glittering spots dusted around the galaxy halo. Astronomers study theglobular clusters in NGC 7049 to learn more about its formation and evolution. The dust lanes, which appear as a lacyweb, are dramatically backlit by the millions of stars in the halo of NGC 7049.

Credit:

NASA, ESA and W. Harris (McMaster University, Ontario, Canada)

Holiday Wishes from the Hubble Space Telescope

20In the new Hubble image of the galaxy M74 we can also see a smattering of bright pink regions decorating the spiral arms.These are huge, relatively short-lived, clouds of hydrogen gas which glow due to the strong radiation from hot, young stars

embedded within them; glowing pink regions of ionized hydrogen (hydrogen that has lost its electrons). These regions ofstar formation show an excess of light at ultraviolet wavelengths and astronomers call them HII regions.Credit:

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage (STScI/AURA)-ESA/Hubble Collaboration

Star birth in the extreme


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21Hubble's view of the Carina Nebula shows star birth in a new level of detail. The fantasy-like landscape of the nebula is

sculpted by the action of outflowing winds and scorching ultraviolet radiation from the monster stars that inhabit thisinferno. In the process, these stars are shredding the surrounding material that is the last vestige of the giant cloud fromwhich the stars were born.

The immense nebula is an estimated 7,500 light-years away in the southern constellation Carina the Keel (of the oldsouthern constellation Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts, from Greek mythology).

This image is a mosaic of the Carina Nebula assembled from 48 frames taken with Hubble Space Telescope's AdvancedCamera for Surveys. The Hubble images were taken in the light of ionized hydrogen. Colour information was added with

data taken at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Red corresponds to sulfur, green to hydrogen, and blueto oxygen emission.Credit:

NASA, ESA, N. Smith (University of California, Berkeley), and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

Nearby Dust Clouds in the Milky Way


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22The yearly ritual of spring cleaning clears a house of dust as well as dust "bunnies", those pesky dust balls that frolic

under beds and behind furniture. NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has photographed similar dense knots of dust andgas in our Milky Way Galaxy. This cosmic dust, however, is not a nuisance. It is a concentration of elements that areresponsible for the formation of stars in our galaxy and throughout the universe.

These opaque, dark knots of gas and dust are called Bok globules, and they are absorbing light in the center of the nearbyemission nebula and star-forming region, NGC 281. The globules are named after astronomer Bart Bok, who proposed

their existence in the 1940'sCredit:

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)Acknowledgment: P. McCullough (STScI)Largest ever galaxy portrait - stunning HD image of Pinwheel Galaxy

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This new Hubble image reveals the gigantic Pinwheel galaxy, one of the best known examples of "grand design spirals",

and its supergiant star-forming regions in unprecedented detail. The image is the largest and most detailed photo of aspiral galaxy ever taken with Hubble.Credit:

Image: European Space Agency & NASA

Acknowledgements:

Project Investigators for the original Hubble data: K.D. Kuntz (GSFC), F. Bresolin (University of Hawaii), J. Trauger (JPL),J. Mould (NOAO), and Y.-H. Chu (University of Illinois, Urbana)

Image processing: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

CFHT image: Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope/J.-C. Cuillandre/Coelum

NOAO image: George Jacoby, Bruce Bohannan, Mark Hanna/NOAO/AURA/NSFOut of this whirl: The Whirlpool Galaxy (M51) and companion galaxy

24The graceful, winding arms of the majestic spiral galaxy M51 (NGC 5194) appear like a grand spiral staircase sweeping

through space. They are actually long lanes of stars and gas laced with dust.

This sharpest-ever image, taken in January 2005 with the Advanced Camera for Surveys aboard the NASA/ESA HubbleSpace Telescope, illustrates a spiral galaxy's grand design, from its curving spiral arms, where young stars reside, to itsyellowish central core, a home of older stars. The galaxy is nicknamed the Whirlpool because of its swirling structure.

The Whirlpool's most striking feature is its two curving arms, a hallmark of so-called grand-design spiral galaxies. Manyspiral galaxies possess numerous, loosely shaped arms that make their spiral structure less pronounced. These arms

serve an important purpose in spiral galaxies. They are star-formation factories, compressing hydrogen gas and creatingclusters of new stars. In the Whirlpool, the assembly line begins with the dark clouds of gas on the inner edge, thenmoves to bright pink star-forming regions, and ends with the brilliant blue star clusters along the outer edge.

Some astronomers believe that the Whirlpool's arms are so prominent because of the effects of a close encounter withNGC 5195, the small, yellowish galaxy at the outermost tip of one of the Whirlpool's arms. At first glance, the compact

galaxy appears to be tugging on the arm. Hubble's clear view, however, shows that NGC 5195 is passing behind theWhirlpool. The small galaxy has been gliding past the Whirlpool for hundreds of millions of years.

As NGC 5195 drifts by, its gravitational muscle pumps up waves within the Whirlpool's pancake-shaped disk. The wavesare like ripples in a pond generated when a rock is thrown in the water. When the waves pass through orbiting gas cloudswithin the disk, they squeeze the gaseous material along each arm's inner edge. The dark dusty material looks like

gathering storm clouds. These dense clouds collapse, creating a wake of star birth, as seen in the bright pink star-formingregions. The largest stars eventually sweep away the dusty cocoons with a torrent of radiation, hurricane-like stellar winds,and shock waves from supernova blasts. Bright blue star clusters emerge from the mayhem, illuminating the Whirlpool's


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arms like city streetlights.

The Whirlpool is one of astronomy's galactic darlings. Located 31 million light-years away in the constellation CanesVenatici (the Hunting Dogs), the Whirlpool's beautiful face-on view and closeness to Earth allow astronomers to study a

classic spiral galaxy's structure and star-forming processes.Credit:

NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI), and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)Hubble Spies Cosmic Dust Bunnies

25Hubble Spies Cosmic Dust BunniesCredit:

NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team STScI/AURA)

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